


The Rules of the Office

by calathea



Category: Psych
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gus warned Shawn that there were rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rules of the Office

"What did I tell you the rules for the office were, Shawn?" Gus asked, in that tone of voice Shawn had learned to dread. It was the same tone he'd used that time when Shawn decided to find out if MacGuyver's design for a helicopter made of a ceiling fan and cement mixer actually worked, and that time Shawn had embroiled Gus in the scandal with the electric toothbrushes and those people who might or might not have been the Russian mafia. It wasn't a good tone of voice at all.

Shawn shuffled his feet. "Don't fill it with monkeys?" he offered.

"No!" said Gus, frowning at him. "Well, yes, that too, and I don't want to know where you got all those Capuchins."

"Don't pour coffee in your shoes?" Shawn said. "Don't fill the bathtub with jello and see if you can swim in it?"

"No!" said Gus, irate. "I mean, yes. Shawn!"

"Excuse me," said a man, pushing past Gus. He was carrying an oxygen tank and an axe.

"Sorry," said Gus, in a milder tone of voice, and moved out of the way.

"Well, how am I supposed to remember all your rules?" Shawn asked dramatically, flinging his arms wide.

Gus glared at him even harder. "No unattended flames, Shawn," he said. "Under any circumstances, ever again. Not even for an anniversary cake in the shape of a pineapple representing our lifelong friendship and timed so that the candles lit at the exact moment we met, not when you are also taking me to lunch three blocks away at that exact moment!"

"That should do it!" a firefighter called from by the front door of the office.

Subdued, Shawn followed Gus across the street to their office. The fire had been combined to a small area around Shawn's desk that had probably only contained paperwork anyway. The pineapple cake was a sad, blackened wreck. Water dripped and pooled from the desk onto the floor.

Gus stared at the remains of the cake for a long moment. Shawn could almost see the moment when the cool, steely facade of Burton Guster cracked. "You remember the exact time?" he said.

"Twelve fourteen!" said Shawn, instantly.

The corner of Gus' mouth twitched. "It was a pineapple cake?"

"A pineapple cake in the shape of a pineapple," Shawn said. He hastily shuffled what, even half-burned, he easily recognized as the cheque that was supposed to pay this month's Psych agency expenses under a pile of papers.

Gus' mouth twitched again.

Shawn grinned at him hopefully.

"No more monkeys," Gus said, sternly. "Or jello, or coffee in my shoes."

Shawn nodded fervently.

"But I suppose we could have another cake," Gus concluded, and Shawn whooped, grabbed his desk keys, and opened the deepest of his desk drawers. He retrieved a second cake and set it on the desk, and pulling out his lighter, lit the candles.

Gus stared at him. "Why do you have two cakes, Shawn?" Gus asked.

"That's not important," Shawn said, nobly waving away the credit he was due for his awesome Maximum Redundancy Cake Plan. "Happy anniversary, Gus!"


End file.
